Harsh winds and waves lash Minamisanriku's sparsely settled coastline. Far from Tokyo's neon-lit cityscapes and Kyoto's serene gardens, this is a part of Japan you seldom hear about. It has an older population, fewer jobs, more suicides, and more tsunamis than the rest of the country.
Out of a population of more than 18,000 in Minamisanriku, the tsunami killed about a thousand; 2,000 were given temporary shelter elsewhere, and another thousand simply packed up left for good. It took the central government eight months to come up with a reconstruction budget and eleven months to create an agency to administer it. (NPR)